Sick while over the road

by Anonymous

I am a wife of a truck driver who is new at it & he has been driving now for 5 months & he had a situation come up where he wanted me to have our family doctor advise what he should take or do & I told him that I would do that for him but I told him I highly doubted the doc could give advice since he was not home here & after going to the doc's office I was right.

I asked my husband if when he went to orientation if they told him if he gets sick, who he could go to & he said no they didn't tell him.

Well when I stopped at the doc's office & I asked the girl at the front desk for the doctor to call me so I could talk to him & of course she asked me what it was about & I told he, she then told me unless he is here being seen the doctor cannot give advice or suggestions over the phone.

He complained to me that he had the chills & no matter how high he put the heat up in the truck, nothing helped & then for a few days he said he had blood in his urine but now he is fine, but he did tell me that while he was sleeping & the team driver took over to drive, he was thrown out of the sleeper berth & landed on his back because his team driver is very hard on hitting the brakes.

Now I asked my husband if these truck stops can have laundry facilities, places to get showers, haircuts, etc. & restaurants to eat & a gift shop, why can't they have a clinic set up for these over the road truck drivers that are far from home & away from their family doctor.

And there are people out there that is not associated with truckers or their families that have no idea what it is all about because this same girl at the doctor's office when I told her that my husband is 3,000 miles away from here, she says to me I can book him an appt. this afternoon & I said to her I just told you he is 3,000 miles away from here right now, he is driving a truck, not piloting a 747!

So I left the doctor's office with no help but got some advice from a pharmacy tech that told me for him to take some Motrin for the chills.

Does anyone out there that can give me some advice that when the hubby is away, are there some truck stops that have health clinics set up for sick problems while they are away from home because you certainly don't go to the nearest ER for a cold or a urinary tract infection.

I felt helpless that I couldn't help my husband or give him advice from the doctor's office.